Firefox Friday #1 - Useful Plugins for SharePoint Development

FasterFox PluginDownload: http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/Description: Various network tweaks that deliver a zippy experience. This will also speed up your SharePoint user experience greatly too.

1. Prefetch Links Dynamic speed increases can be obtained with Fasterfox's unique prefetching mechanism, which recycles idle bandwidth by silently loading and caching all of the links on the page you are browsing.

2. Tweak Network Fasterfox allows you to tweak many network and rendering settings such as simultaneous connections, pipelining, cache, DNS cache, and initial paint delay.

3. Page Load Timer A millisecond accurate page load timer tests the effectiveness of your settings.

4. Block Popups A popup blocker for popups initiated by Flash plug-ins is also included.Notes:1. Remember, just because you've got a turbocharged browser doesn't mean your colleagues or clients do. This plugin is a double-edged sword because you can get lazy or indifferent about performance problems on web applications. If you are developing, testing, or QA'ing systems you should either use a different browser (COUGH IETester COUGH) or temporarily disable Fasterfox. 2. The out of the box setting in the Firefox > Add-Ons > FasterFox > Options menu is "Optimized". Set that bad boy to "Turbo Charged" and to hell with playing nice with server resources - our time is worth more!
   

Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox Download: http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/windows-media-player-firefox-plugin-downloadDescription: Lets you run Windows Media content in Firefox. In particular you will be able to stream WMV videos such as the ones we have in the newly minted it groove SharePoint center directly in your browser window.

Web Developer ToolbarDownload: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/web-developer/Description: Adds a toolbar with a slew of options essential for anything webby. CSS, Forms, Images, Cookies, Viewing Source - instantly get Xray vision into any web page.

iMacros for FirefoxDownload: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/imacros-for-firefox/?src=collection&collection_id=da0ecd99-2289-7ab0-7d57-e7c489c845c3Description: Automate Firefox. Record and replay repetitious work. If you love the Firefox web browser, but are tired of repetitive tasks like visiting the same sites every days, filling out forms, and remembering passwords, then iMacros for Firefox is the solution you’ve been dreaming of! ***Whatever you do with Firefox, iMacros can automate it.***

Colorzilla Download: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/colorzilla/Description: With ColorZilla you can get a color reading from any point in your browser, quickly adjust this color and paste it into another program. You can Zoom the page you are viewing and measure distances between any two points on the page. The built-in palette browser allows choosing colors from pre-defined color sets and saving the most used colors in custom palettes. Basic end-user usage could be grabbing the color code for the blue from a clients logo and matching it up to another design element.

FirebugDownload: http://getfirebug.com/Description: Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Learning to use Firebug is a whole different topic but it is possible for non-developers to get working with it to quickly id and delegate issues due to Javascript or CSS issues, broken images, etc. Firebug also is required for Yahoo YSlow and the Google Pagespeed Firefox Plugins